Kermit was probably right, but I bet he’d think life was a little bit easier if he knew what it was like to be a full-figured woman trying to find a properly fitting pair of jeans. Come to think of it, does Kermit even wear pants?
Without getting too specific (can’t reveal anything confidential), it’s more than fair to say a woman’s world DOES need another pair of jeans!
As important as the specifics of what we learned on the subject of women’s jeans, are the key strategic takeaways from my experience that I hope any strategist or person responsible for driving the strategic growth of their business will find helpful.
In this group it was clear from the moment they saw me at the end of the table that I wasn’t a woman. With that came the immediate conclusion that I probably had little idea as to the emotional roller coaster a woman goes though trying to find a pair of good fitting jeans.
What they (both our client and our respondents) didn’t expect was for me to address the 300lb gorilla head on and come out and say exactly what they were thinking: “I don’t know, so I need your help in understanding what it is like.”
The effect of such a bold move was two fold:
1. It immediately empowered these respondents to speak with confidence and share their POV without being self-conscious as to how smart they appeared. By being women they were already “smarter” than the moderator.
2. It empowered me (and thus our research) to ask almost anything, facilitating a much deeper look into issues such as Fit.
Too often a major roadblock strategists face is to get consumers to dig below the surface, beyond the “performance” aspect of speaking in front of their peers, and really share their point of view (however unpopular or polarizing it may be).
In this situation, by creatively leveraging the gender difference, we were able to break down any barriers from the get go, and truly explore the language and emotions of the topic more deeply than most.
So if there’s a moral to this story of living in a woman’s world it’s simply this: Whether you’re male or female, never be reluctant to admit “you don’t know.”
It can (and in this case, it did) lead you down the road of learning more than you could have ever imagined about your brand, business or consumer.
Doug Zarkin
SVP Strategy
Tweet this | Tags: focus group, jeans, woman, women
